Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,82

just as he was born with blue-tinged skin. And a few other abilities that are particular to him.”

Until that moment, I hadn’t really believed we could be talking about the same person. Early Bronze Age? That would make him . . . what, like five thousand years old? If he’d been walking the earth for five thousand years, why wouldn’t more modern witches know about him?

Kirsten must have read the doubts on my face, because she chuckled. “No, he’s not immortal. He died after a few hundred years of life, just like the rest of the conduits. But his connection to death allowed him certain privileges. He can be . . . raised.”

“From the dead. Raised from the dead,” I repeated. I couldn’t help it. It sounded so stupid out loud.

“Yes. But at great cost. One human sacrificed for each day he walks, that’s the deal.”

“The bodies in Boulder,” I said, thinking aloud. “They were murders.”

She nodded. “I understood when I read that there were no wounds. Lysander has no need for the bodies themselves. He takes his victims’ spirits, leaving them with no visible injuries or marks.”

So he’d been in Boulder for two days, just like Emil. “Lysander? That’s his name?”

She put her hand out, flat, and then tilted it back and forth. “Last I heard, that was his preferred name, but he’s had a lot of them. There have been stories and legends about him for thousands of years, with varying degrees of accuracy. Nergal in Mesopotamia, Horus in Egypt, Hades in Greece, and so on. Later, there were rumors about him that were nonspecific, and he was given names like ghoul, barrow-wight, and revenant,” Kirsten said. Now she was reminding me of Simon, who was always interested in having all the background. “But where I’m from,” she went on, her face darkening, “we call him the draugr.”

I frowned. “Draugr?”

“You may have heard the word before. In Norse mythology a draugr is an undead creature, similar to a vampire in some ways. They live in barrows or graves, and animals or humans who come into regular contact with those locations lose their minds.”

So the mysterious illness plaguing animals was connected to Elise’s psych cases after all. If Lysander had been lurking around my regular haunts, no pun intended, it would make sense that some of the wildlife would be affected. I wanted to kick myself, but how could I have known it was a magical illness? “Why? Why do normal humans go crazy around this guy?”

“Because Lysander’s power is like a toxin that seeps into the groundwater, or radiation that hangs around long after the bomb blast.” She shook her head. “That’s what happens when you put an ancient conduit in the modern world.”

“How do you know so much about him?” I asked her. “My friends haven’t been able to find any history or testimonies about boundary witches’ actions during the Inquisition. Not even rumors on the internet.”

Sadness crept into her eyes. “I know,” she said, “because the Inquisition wasn’t the first time the draugr was brought back from the dead. Thousands of years before that, he was raised briefly in Scandinavia. That’s where our legends come from. Like all legends, they’ve changed and warped over time, but Lysander hasn’t. That’s also why we do not play with boundary magic.”

My tea was gone, so I got up to put more hot water in my mug. I didn’t really need more tea, but I did need time to absorb everything Kirsten had just said.

I was oddly relieved to hear that the man I’d encountered was a sort of man. Conduits were derived from humans, after all, or whatever the Bronze Age equivalent had been. I could accept that the thing I’d run into was a super-witch.

But I was still struggling to wrap my head around the idea of him being my father. Why would my mother . . . I winced, not wanting to let my thoughts go there. Maybe the draugr had spelled her somehow. Maybe he’d pressed her mind. I could have asked Kirsten what she thought, but I wasn’t sure what she’d do if she knew that I was the draugr’s daughter.

By the time I added milk and sugar to my tea and got back to the table, I had at least figured out what to ask. “Who raised him?”

Kirsten, who had just drained the last of her hot chocolate, set down the mug and pointed at me. “That’s the right question. Raising the draugr is